


Perchance to Dream

by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)



Category: The Thin Red Line (1998)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Post-Movie, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-08
Updated: 2005-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-31 06:50:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/pseuds/Sandrine%20Shaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another life, things might have been different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perchance to Dream

In another life, you might have been friends. 

"I might be the best friend you ever had," you told Witt, what seems like a lifetime of pain and grief and resignation ago.

And in an odd way, that's what you were in the end. Friends… but not in the way you mean it. You think if things had gone differently, you could have been the kind of friends who'd hang out at the bar around the corner every Friday night to talk about the week's work.

There wouldn't have been a war, and you wouldn't be soldiers. You wouldn't be stuck on this Godforsaken rock at the other end of the world, and Witt wouldn't lie six feet under the ground, riddled by bullets.

You would sit next to him and smile as you watch him flirt with the waitress, a pretty blonde thing who should be used to being hit at, but nevertheless flushes whenever he offers her a smile. When she brings you your beers, you'd tell her not to break your friend's heart. She'd go off, blushing more than ever.

You would drink too much, and Witt would half-carry you home, making sure he'd get you to your doorstep safely. Your girlfriend would frown disapprovingly at you and thank him for taking care of you. She'd invite him to spend the night on the couch in your living room, and in the morning, the three of you would have breakfast together.

You close your eyes and try to imagine it, sitting together on a sunlit Saturday morning, the rich, warm smell of coffee in the air, Witt handing you the salt. Instead, you see his bleeding body lying on the damp ground, coloring the grass crimson. 

You force yourself not to think about it, and it almost works.

In another life, you might have been strangers. Witt might have been assigned to a different platoon; or you might have been dead before he arrived. Or maybe, and you like this scenario best, Witt would never have joined the army to begin with. 

Witt never belonged here. War is for hardened men who've forgotten how to feel anything but rage; it's a playground for heroes and a graveyard for fools and cowards. Witt had never been either.

You like to believe that Witt would have been a farmer, or a priest, or maybe a doctor. Somewhere, far away, where this war would never have touched him.

You would never have met each other. One day, you might have come home, returning from all this madness alive – just barely; and you might have passed him in the crowded streets, your shoulder briefly brushing against his as you hurried along. You would never have known.

And maybe, it would have been for the best.

In another life, perhaps, you might have been lovers. 

You've seen so many horrors in this war, you thought nothing could ever touch you anymore, thought your heart had long since turned to stone and ice and no one would ever make it beat again. Witt… Witt had. Witt had taken in your hard words and smiled at you, telling you that he could still see some kind of light in you.

And you had believed him, because if someone like Witt could look at you the way he did, with all that warmth in his eyes, there really had to be _something_ bury deep inside of you that he could see. Something beneath the layers of bitterness and pain and indifference.

You wanted to reach out and touch Witt, to see if you could or if Witt would crumble and turn to dust under your fingers.

Now that it's too late, you wish you had touched him back then. And you aren't so dead inside yet not to know what that would have meant, or to believe that it would have stopped there, at a simple, singular touch. It wouldn't have, couldn't have… and you imagine a future where things would be different.

Where Witt would have escaped the ambush, just barely getting back to the platoon alive and uninjured, adrenaline running high. It would have to be you who makes the first step – not because you're more courageous, but because Witt has been waiting for you to be ready for this. And when you finally are, propelled into actions by Witt's close brush with death, you'd grab Witt and push him against a tree as soon as you are finally alone. Your lips would be on his, angry and desperate, no quarter given, as if you wanted to hurt him. But Witt would be respond with infinite patience and tenderness; and when he'd smile and reach out for you, it would be you who's falling apart under those gentle hands, not the other way around.

You might even be able to keep this alive when you return home, eventually. Or maybe, quite possibly, you wouldn't. You'd promise to stay in touch, but phone calls and letters and occasional encounters would become more and more infrequent over the months; and it would never be the same again. You'd start to rationalize what the two of you had with the war, being so far from home and the ever-present danger of being killed hanging in the air. With that gone, you'd return to being friends, or casual acquaintances who write each other Christmas cards, or even strangers. But it wouldn't matter, because you'd always have this.

But you don't. You didn't, and you never will. Because that's not how life turned out.

Door slamming, Bosche rushes into the quarters, yelling for the soldiers to wake up and get their asses in gear. Another day, as bleak and deadly and unfriendly as any other. Another day, and it might be the last one for some of you. 

You roll off your cod, straightening the covers, and shut out all thoughts of might-have-been's. 

There is no other life but this one.

Fin.


End file.
